Principles-Class2CreativeConfidence1.pdf

Principles of Creativity

Dr. Michael J. McNamara

 Purpose of the Unit:
◦ ‘Meaning’ and ‘measurements’ of creativity;
◦ Creative confidence
◦ Creative Mindset

 Tasks for the Week:
◦ Watch my lecture on “Creative Confidence”

posted in SLATE’s Course Media Gallery
◦ Watch David Kelley’s Ted talk: “How to Build

Your Creative Confidence”
◦ Read the very short article by Sweet et al.

“Developing Creative Confidence” available on
SLATE

◦ Brainstorm about what ‘new thing’ you might
engage with for the Creativity Assignment (due
June 4)

◦ Join us for the Debrief Meeting in SLATE’s
Virtual Classroom (evite forthcoming).

◦ No assignments/exercise due this week

 Psychologist, University of Nebraska (and
later USC)
◦ During WW2, Chief of the Psychological Research

Unit at the U.S. Army Air Forces Training Command
Headquarters in Fort Worth

◦ Oversaw the Stanine (Standard Nine) Project in
1943- aimed at identifying intellectual abilities
crucial to flying a plane.

◦ Preliminary Findings: there are 9 intellectual
abilities crucial to being a good pilot some of which
are not captured by IQ.

 1950 Presidential Address to the American
Psychological Association- need for research
to isolate the various and discrete factors of
thinking
◦ Need to separate out creativity and others skills

from the factors measured by IQ

 Structure of Intellect theory= a total of 90
discrete intellectual abilities and 30
behavioral abilities.

 Divergent- in ‘different
directions’ as opposed to
choosing among
predetermined/traditional ones.

 Divergent thinking- the thought
process of developing many
different possible solutions,
answers, or responses to a
problem.

 Occurs in a spontaneous, ‘free-
flowing’ manner’ such that many
ideas are generated and many
possible solutions are explored.

 “Divergent Thinkers” are always
looking for more options.

 Scoring:
1. Fluency- the total number of interpretable,

meaningful, and relevant ideas generated in
response to the stimulus
◦ Add up all responses

2. Flexibility- the number of different
categories of relevant responses
◦ Identify and Count the categories in the

responses

3. Originality- the statistical rarity of the
responses
◦ Each response is compared to the total amount

of all responses from test-takers. 5% are
unusual (1pnt); 1% are unique (2pnts)

4. Elaboration- the amount of detail in the
responses
◦ 1 point per detail

 Examinees are asked to
come up with many possible
items that contain a specific
component.

◦ Scoring is comprised of four
components:

1. Fluency

2. Flexibility

3. Originality

4. Elaboration

 Name things with wheels.

 Florence- a prodigy, the highest IQ score in
the entire school.

 Poole- a solid C student

Malcolm Gladwell’s in “Outliers”;
paraphrasing the research of Liam Hudson

 Florence:
◦ (Brick): Building things. Throwing.

 Poole:
◦ (Brick): To us in smash-and-grab raids. To help

hold a house together. To use in a game of Russian
routlette if you want to keep fit at the same time
(brick at ten paces, turn and throw). To hold the
eiderdown on a bed tie a brick at each corner. As a
breaker of empty Coke bottles.

 Florence:
◦ (Blanket): Keeping warm, smothering fires, tying to

trees and sleeping in (a hammock), improvised
stretcher.

 Poole:
◦ (Blanket): To use on a bed. As a cover for sex in the

woods. As a tent. To make smoke signals with. As
a sail for a boat, cart, or sled. As a substitute for a
towel. As a target for shooting practice for short-
sighted people. As a thing to catch people jumping
out of burning skyscrapers.

FLUENCY- lots of ideas

FLEXIBILITY- thinking broadly; different
types/categories of ideas/ perspectives

ORIGINALITY: unique and novel or unheard of before.
Combinations (new arrangements of old/un-related
ideas), transformation, or transcendence

UTILITY: useful. The ability to see if the solution actually
solves the problem.

SURPRISE: brings familiar things together in an
unfamiliar/unexpected way. Think beyond conventional
boundaries or categories, loosen up the associations

BEAUTY: appealing, captivating and aesthetically
satisfying

 The Asch Experiment (Asch
Clip)
◦ Solomon Asch, Swarthmore

College-

◦ 1950s “Conformity
Experiments”

 Key Question

 To what degree are an
individual’s opinions and
responses influenced by those
of a majority group?

 The Asch Experiment (Asch Clip)
◦ Key Question

 To what degree are an individual’s
opinions and responses influenced
by those of a majority group?

◦ Finding:
 In the control group, with no

pressure to conform to
confederates, the error rate was
less than 1%.

 Overall, in the experimental group,
75% of the participants gave an
incorrect answer to at least one
question.

1. Rauth et al. (2010): “a
development of trust in one’s
own creative skills”

2. Kelly Bros. (2013): “Creative
confidence is the ability to
come up with breakthrough
ideas combined with the
courage to act on them”…

3. Kelly Bros. (2012): “Confidence
doesn’t simply mean believing
your ideas are good. It means
having the humility to let go of
ideas that aren’t working and to
accept good ideas from other
people”

 Openness to experience: single
strongest and most consistent
personality trait that predicts
creative achievement,”

 “For artists and innovators of all
stripes, novel experiences provide
the crucial tissue of real-world
material that can be spun into
original work.”

 And instills a self-confidence,
resiliency and perseverance in the
individual; ‘new things’ can be
discovered, achieved, and overcome

 Be ‘intentional’ about
creativity

 To be more creative, the
Kelleys argue, “the first step
is to decide you want to
make it happen”

 Be-Creative Effect: just
being told to ‘be creative’
before a divergent thinking
task makes the responses
more creative”

 Kelley’s “Embrace a bias towards action”
 Consistently constructing interactive

experiences in an effort to see how things
work
◦ Intellectual exploration
◦ Physical tinkering
◦ Engagement in new surroundings
◦ Building prototypes

 “Our culture opens us to allowing lots of
failures while harvesting the learning. It’s what
separates an innovation culture from a normal
corporate culture.” (Scott Cook, Founder, Intuit)

 Adopting a Hypothesis-testing Mindset:
◦ Develop new hypotheses from the knowledge you’ve

acquired and test them in the search for new
solutions

◦ Take apart a product or process that interests you
◦ Travel to learn about different lifestyles and local

behavior.

 Creativity & Divergent
Thinking
◦ Fluency
◦ Flexibility
◦ Originality
◦ Value/Utility
◦ Surprise & Beauty

 Conformity
◦ Ash Line Studies

 Creative Confidence
◦ Choosing Creativity
◦ Openness to Experience (Risk)
◦ Bias towards Action (Hypothesis

Testing Mindset)

 Week 3 : Creative Cognition
 Topics:
 – The Pillars of Cognition
 – Consciousness, Perception and Attention
 -Dual Process Creativity (Type 1 and Type 2

Thinking)


 Required Readings:
 Sowden, P. T., Pringle, A., & Gabora, L. (2015).

The shifting sands of creative thinking:
Connections to dual-process theory. Thinking &
Reasoning, 21(1), 40-60. (SLATE) Pages 1-10 &
14-16 only